


into the sea

by caelam (Tennciel)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Post-Apocalypse, but it ain't that deep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 07:46:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8524489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tennciel/pseuds/caelam
Summary: In which the ocean replaces forests and humanity is trapped on boats, and Kyungsoo finds himself breaking rules and falling into something that might be a little bit like love. (Or, alternatively, how Kyungsoo narrowly avoids the end of the world with a bunch of idiots and a lifeboat.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> heyooo this is a repost of my fic that i wrote for the "no one dies this time" kaisoo fest last summer, it's also posted on the fest livejournal :) this fic was kinda my baby for a while and I hope y'all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! have fun

The whole world drowns.

Kyungsoo doesn't see it, of course. That was long before his time. But he reads about it in worn, forgotten books on the downtime of his shift, thumbing over pictures of jagged rock formations and acres of green forest that he can't possibly imagine once being real. When he looks out the window, all he sees is blue—straight into the horizon, endless on both sides. _There's something underneath it all_ , he thinks, but the thought doesn't process all the way.

Kyungsoo's parents don't understand why he's even curious of what life was like before—it's "frivolous", they say, and he supposes he agrees with them. After all, life would never be mountainous and forested again. All they have now, and all they ever will, are the boats.

It's not a bad life. Kyungsoo knows from said books that as the water levels rose, major cities in the world began constructing models just like the one he's standing on—massive, multilayer warships that were designed to last as long as mankind could hold on. They were bigger than anything the world had ever seen, yet still too small to hold the world itself; respective governments were forced to pick and choose those who would win against the flood, and those who would lose. Leaders, role-models, politicians, the rich—they kicked and scratched their way into a spot for safety. The rest were left under the water somewhere, as much a myth to Kyungsoo as long paved streetways and stretching skyscrapers.

On the boats, life is structured around your family history. You're given a "crucial" job based upon it. Children of politicians grow up to run the government and make the rules of the ship. Children of less well-off families grow up to work on the ship's uppermost level—the greenhouse—growing genetically altered seeds (altered, because they were designed to flourish at sea) in the chemical concoction of soil the ship scientists had made. Children of doctors run the boat's medical facilities, etc. There's little element of choice, but if Kyungsoo really thinks about it, he can't bring himself to feel resentment. The world had drowned. They were still alive. They had to take what they could get.

Kyungsoo's genetic line is a long list of military leaders, leaving him in charge of ship security and inter-ship relations. He spends most of his days stuck in the surveillance room, watching cameras for any onboard "suspicious activity" (there never was any), and more cameras outside to check their surroundings for any dangers (again, none, unless you count an endless expanse of nothing and Kyungsoo's complete boredom as a danger). 

On good days, they cross paths with another ship and he gets to send telegrams about stopping near each other, for their traders to exchange goods and ideas, before continuing on their respective routes. On bad days, he watches his shift-mate, Sehun, play solitaire with himself for several hours.

But Kyungsoo does have meaning to his life, obviously. He has his parents: his father, who takes his job of patrolling the ship at night very seriously, and his mother, who could out-negotiate pretty much anyone into compromising. They follow and enforce the rules—they were made for these jobs. Kyungsoo was too. At least, he was supposed to be.

He also has Baekhyun, arguably his best friend, who spends his whole life up in the greenhouse digging in the dirt. Baek is what Kyungsoo liked to call a "flower of optimism"—always looking on the bright side of things, always downplaying when things went wrong, never once complaining even though the whole ship knows that the people stuck in the greenhouse have the roughest life on board. Baekhyun has an endless supply of (usually not funny) jokes, and he sings when he harvests plants. Kyungsoo has liked him ever since they were kids. 

Kyungsoo likes the greenhouse, too—he likes to lay there and look up through the glass to where all he can see is sky. It's so much different from what he usually has to look at all day; the room is hot and bustling there, and the floor covered in dirt. Kyungsoo always returns to their family quarters sweaty and littered with stains on the back of his shirt—his father scowls when he sees them.

Kyungsoo has Chen, the happy go-lucky chef (ration maker, really), who always talks animatedly with Kyungsoo in the mornings and slips a bit extra into their family portions, giving a sly wink. He has the old woman nurse who has collapsed on the surveillance cameras on more than one occasion, but when Kyungsoo rushes to her side she always insists she was just "resting her eyes".  
He's got Kris, the surveillance guy on the Beijing ship who somehow always gets stuck being on shift when he's on shift, when their ships cross paths. He's incredibly awkward and has drawn crude stick-figure portraits for them over the messaging system more than a couple of times. He once had a rap battle with Sehun over the transmission for 45 minutes. Kyungsoo had never come so close to wanting to die.

And of course, Kyungsoo has Sehun, too. God love that kid. 

It's a pretty ordinary Saturday when said kid comes to him with a scheming look on his face, one Kyungsoo already doesn't trust.

"No," Kyungsoo says.

"You haven't even listened to what I'm going to ask yet," Sehun whines. "Come on, Kyungsoo, give me two minutes."

Kyungsoo raises his eyebrow, and then sighs. "Yeah, two minutes. Go."

"Cover my shift tonight."

Sehun always takes part of his shift in the surveillance room with Kyungsoo, and the other half by himself at night—Kyungsoo usually avoids the night shift, as sitting in his comfy chair in a dark room lulls him to sleep faster than a mobile for a baby. He's sure Sehun sleeps on the job, too, but the difference is that Kyungsoo would actually feel guilty for a job poorly done. Sehun doesn't feel guilty about anything. 

"Why," Kyungsoo deadpans. 

He grins. "I've got this conference call type thing with some of the guys from the Beijing ship scheduled for tonight, on one of the old transmitters that I hacked. We're gonna have a _rap battle_. You know, serious stuff."

"Okay, no."

"Okay, _yes_. It's one night, c'mon. None of them will be on shift, and I need my full attention to spit my sick fires." 

Kyungsoo snorts. "Uh-huh. Keep dreaming, lisp boy." 

Sehun has the decency to look affronted. "My parents gave me _speech therapy_! You can't even notice it anymore!"

"I'm not staying up until the asscrack of dawn so you can rap, Oh Sehun," Kyungsoo says, interrupting what is sure to be a long-winded defense. "End of story."

"I'll cover you for a week," Sehun says—he’s resorted to begging. Kyungsoo purposely stays silent. 

"Two weeks," Sehun amends. "A month, and I'll throw in a couple of my rations, too. C'mon, you'll get extra food and you can spend more time up in the greenhouse. I see you on the cameras, you know. Baekhyun would be excited to see you up there."

"Baekhyun is excited when the sun shines," Kyungsoo says stiffly, but his argument is weak, and he knows it.

He and Sehun make eye contact and Kyungsoo hesitates just a moment too long before trying to make a response. The side corners of Sehun's mouth begin to slide into a smug smirk. He knows he's won. Motherfucker. 

"A month," Kyungsoo affirms.

"A month."

"If you lose the rap battle I'm disowning you."

Sehun scoffs. 

"I'd disown myself," he says.

 

.

 

Kyungsoo hates the fucking night shift.

He spends the first hour and a half spinning his chair in circles in an effort to keep him awake (he spends the next half hour trying not to throw up), and spends the forty minutes after staring apathetically, cursing Sehun, and debating whether or not stabbing himself will get him out of finishing the night. He glances at the screens in complete despondency—they're empty, of course, no one's allowed out at night other than those on patrol—and that's when it happens. 

It's a flicker, really— a spindly movement in the corner of the screen that Kyungsoo is at first sure he imagined. It's on the screen for the boiler room, a place located at the bottom of the ship and not very well surveilled due to it being dirty and not a popular visitor destination. 

He keeps his eyes locked to the screen in slight horror, not even daring to breathe.

 _It wasn't real_ , he thinks desperately. _It's late and my imagination is running away from me and it—_

And there it is again. A flicker, taking shape in the bottom corner, and as Kyungsoo squints, it becomes more and more recognizable. 

It's a hand.

It's barely in the frame, seemingly accidentally peeking over from the side, but he can obviously tell the unmistakable shape of fingers stretching, the long curve of an arm connected to.... to someone (something?) just off screen.

Mother _fucker_.

Technically, he's supposed to lock the surveillance room and go check it out—that's a major part of his job actually, but he's never had to actually _do it_ before. But now it's late and he's about to piss his pants in fear and there's a _fucking thing_ in the basement and _goddammit Oh Sehun._

He shakily grabs a taser from the closet and slides out into the hallway, locking the door behind him. He's going to cry. He's going to really cry and if he dies tonight he will haunt Sehun until the last struggling days of his stupid, rapping ass.

The click of his shoes is too loud as he slowly and steadily clacks down the staircases toward the bottom of the ship. His breathing is too loud, too. Also his heart. He might be going into cardiac arrest, but that's fine—preferable to this at any rate.

He spends a solid two minutes frozen outside the door to the boiler room, arm half-outstretched toward the handle but not showing any signs of finishing the job. He mentally slaps himself a few times before twisting the knob and pushing it open with one quick flourish. 

It's empty. It's silent. 

He slides one foot halfheartedly into the door, then the other, until he is entirely inside the room. He inches toward uncertainly, bravely outstretching a taser he is not entirely sure how to use, and slides around the corner, behind large, tinny machines producing heat and smoke.

He screams. The boy in front of him screams too.

"Y-You—you're not Sehun," Boiler Horror Boy says, wide eyed and out of breath. 

Kyungsoo is going to choke on his own throat. It's always _fucking Sehun._

"Astute observation," Kyungsoo grits. "Did he put you up to this?"

Basement Gremlin's eyes go even wider. "N-No, no, not at all. I wasn't even supposed to—agh, I guess that's what he meant by saying _be extra careful tonight_ , although I gotta say _that_ was a little vague—," he stops. "I, uh. I'm Jongin. I live here."

"Here."

"On the bottom of the ship."

"And why, pray tell, aren't you on the _center_ of the ship, you know, where the _people live_?”

Jongin laughs awkwardly and looks to the corner. "That's... a pretty funny story actually....."

Kyungsoo doesn't need to hear it, though. It's obvious. 

"You're a stowaway," he says. Jongin flinches.

"Sounds a little harsh when you put it like that."

"I ought to report you," Kyungsoo says, raising an eyebrow. "Sehun should have, too."

At this, to Kyungsoo's surprise, the start of a grin begins appearing on Jongin's face—at least, as far as he can tell. It's dark as hell in there and he can barely see the kid.

"Sehun's cool, though. And I know better than to run around during the day—there are plenty of places down here where the cameras don't cover that I can hide." His mouth twitches just a little. "Sehun and I have a agreement. I stay out of trouble, and at night, he lets me get away with free run of the ship— avoiding the patrollers, anyway."

Kyungsoo wrinkles his nose. "That kid is always breaking rules."

"That kid is always having a heart," Jongin points out. "I'm not doing anything wrong down here."

"Come into the light," Kyungsoo says suddenly—it's still too damn dark, and even with Jongin's warm timbre of voice, he doesn't entirely trust that he's not a gremlin.

Kyungsoo backs up and Jongin steps forward, into the dull yellow glow of a singular bulb hanging above them, and—

Oh.

Kyungsoo was, among other things, not expecting an _attractive_ basement monster, which certainly complicates the situation.

"How old are you?" Kyungsoo says, not quite knowing why he felt it important to ask. 

"Twenty-two," Jongin answers, with certainty. They're about the same age then. 

"How long have you been here?"

Jongin shrugs. "A couple months, maybe. I don't exactly keep time."

Kyungsoo wants to ask the all encompassing _how did you get here_ , but it dies in his throat. Jongin is still young. Stowaways don't become stowaways if they have any other options—compared to Kyungsoo's comfy, stable (if a little bit unexciting) life, Jongin has had it rough.

Jongin seems to realize something and turns his head to glance behind him.

"Uh, I can show you around, if you want. It's not that bad down here, you don’t have to look at me all pitiful like that.”

Kyungsoo hesitantly nods and he shuffles forward as Jongin leads him to an open area behind a large furnace—there are thready, thin blankets spread across the ground haphazardly, a small black backpack that has definitely seen better days, and a little pile of clothes folded neatly next to what seems to be a makeshift pillow. It's warm, and a couple of engines have been turned to supply extra light and heat into the area. Jongin has resituated most of the hanging light bulbs in the basement to be strung over this region—explaining why it was so dark everywhere else—but Kyungsoo can see him clearly now. He's tall, a stunning combination of bronze skin and dark hair. He must've been outside, wherever he came from—people didn't get that tan sitting in a ship. _Tall, dark, and mysterious_ , Kyungsoo thinks wryly, but somehow, Jongin seemed too pleasant and open to him to be mysterious or dangerous of any sort. 

On the right side of the blankets, there's a little metal box with torn ration packets stuffed inside it.

"I only take the scraps," Jongin says, following Kyungsoo's line of vision, "so don't worry. It's only the stuff people have thrown away or wouldn't want."

Kyungsoo frowns—some of the packages have barely even crumbs left inside. "You need to eat more than that," Kyungsoo says, trying not to fret or nag—Baekhyun always calls him a mom. "It'd be a pain in the ass for everyone if you died down here."

"Touching." Despite the tone, Jongin is smiling.

Kyungsoo turns, and to the left, there's wide open space where all the clutter in the boiler room has clearly and purposely been moved aside—although for what, Kyungsoo doesn't know. There's nothing there.

"And that?"

"Sehun messed with a camera to not record all around here, including there," Jongin offers. "It's just space to walk around so I don't lose my mind. Usually I dance."

Kyungsoo snorts and lets out an involuntary laugh—who knew, all this damn time, that Kyungsoo had been diligently watching a tapered camera while a dude had been _dancing_ in the basement. He hates Sehun. 

Jongin starts to smile when Kyungsoo laughs, just a slip of pearly teeth, and jokingly, though hesitantly at first, swaggers forward into the empty space and does some kind of pirouette—arms outstretched above him in a graceful arc. Kyungsoo looks at him spinning without a care, trapped in an engine room at three in the morning, and thinks _what the fuck is happening anymore_ and starts to laugh harder. The whole situation is so ridiculous. Sehun is probably rapping right now and Jongin is doing ballet and Kyungsoo's life is ridiculous. He just laughs more.

At some point—Kyungsoo is not quite sure on this—Jongin must have grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the open area too, trying to get him to spin around and dance (joke's on him, Kyungsoo has two left feet) and they're spinning and spinning and Kyungsoo is wheezing and they come to a stop in a most ungraceful manner, halfway crashing into each other with fumbling hands and unsteady feet. 

Kyungsoo looks up into Jongin's eyes and is baffled by how he's so _different_ —so foreign to Kyungsoo, who only knows work and metal walls and surveillance cameras, who knows people who run a ship because that's just what they're supposed to do—and then there's Jongin, with sunkissed skin and threadbare blankets and light that dances in his eyes, someone with objectively nothing but so full of something that Kyungsoo could never in his damn life be able to place, something so present in Jongin that it thrums just under his voice, tangible, warm. 

It makes Kyungsoo dizzy.

"Don't report this," Jongin breathes. His hands are still on Kyungsoo's forearms for balance. "Please."

Kyungsoo should. If he didn't, he wouldn't be his father's son—this is dangerous. The ships are all they have left, and he's been one of the ones assigned to its security at all cost. Reporting break-ins is his duty. It's a simple job, it would protect everyone. Stowaways are dangerous. Stowaways are dangerous.

But Kyunsgoo looks at Jongin and he feels dangerous for a much different reason. 

And Kyungsoo's solidarity, his better judgement, his level-headedness, which everyone has always praised him for, goes straight out the window. He can't stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth, a bad idea that roots and grows with each syllable. 

"I won't," he says. 

 

.

 

"Someone's a grouch this morning," comes the cheery lilt of his best friend, way too happy and way too loud for this time of the day.

"Shut up, Baek. I got like, three minutes of sleep last night."

"Out getting ass so late, Soo? I'm scandalized," Baekhyun smirks as he gestures his hands in mock shock. He's always at least a little bit cheeky, the bastard.

Kyungsoo groans and rolls over. The sun is just beginning to rise over the ocean tide, inches of pink light creeping into the warm greenhouse walls. Baekhyun is bustling around, as per usual, digging and carrying and watering. Kyungsoo has known him his whole life and never seen him stop moving.

"Believe it or not, I had the _night shift_. Sehun can suck my dick."

"Didn't know you were into skinny little brats."

"Piss off."

Baekhyun smiles. "So I'm guessing that's why you're here with me on this lovely morning instead of working your regular shift?" he asks as he fiddles with the knobs of a hose.

"Yeah," Kyungsoo sighs. "It's the one good thing out of this, I guess. I'm free for a month."

Baekhyun lets out a long whistle. "A _month_ , damn—I can't even imagine being as carefree and lazy as you, babe—hey, will you grab me the basket over there? Thanks."

Kyungsoo idly hands Baekhyun the basket he wants and watches as the boy starts ruffling through the dirt, looking for harvestable crops that he can salvage. Baekhyun always has dirt under his nails. By the end of the day, he usually has a nice streak of it across his eyebrow, too.

"Still no luck?" Kyungsoo asks after a few minutes, with pity. 

Baekhyun hangs his head lets out a frustrated groan. 

"I don't _get it_ , Kyungsoo. I've tried everything. Nothing will grow."

"But it's just a rough patch, right? The soil is tired. Stuff will start growing soon."

Baekhyun looks up, then flashes his signature toothy and lightly lopsided grin, laughter lines appearing on his face. But his eyes are tight this time, and his mouth tense.

"Of course we'll be fine," he says, and Kyungsoo wishes he could believe it. Baekhyun shakes his head, as if to shake off the bad feelings and the worry.

"But enough about that. _You_ have a story to tell about your night-shift extravaganza."

Kyungsoo pauses. He's never not told Baekhyun anything—never had a reason, and never wanted to. Kyungsoo had been there through all of Baekhyun's terrible relationships and family drama and general slew of gossip and bad decisions, and Baek had been there for Kyungsoo's less-than-fascinating life. Sometimes Kyungsoo would share with him a partially good solitaire story, or a Kris drawing. Baekhyun always pretended to snore, but he listened attentively.

Yet the idea of telling him about Jongin was—unsettling. It's not like he couldn't trust Baekhyun, he could, but to share Jongin's existence and Kyungsoo's acknowledge of said existence felt very strongly like betraying something (although whether that was to his duty and his family, or to Jongin, he wasn't quite sure).

"Nothing happened. It was night, people slept. I rotted away on the inside. Reevaluated my life."

Baekhyun sighs loudly. "You're lucky I love you, Soo. I don't think anyone else would put up with a friend so gloomy and a life so utterly and entirely ordinary."

"All you do is plant things all day, Baek."

"And I could tell you a _damn good_ story about each little leaf."

Kyungsoo just smiles to himself and rolls over again—his shirt is already gross from the dirt on the floor, he should try to fix that before his parents see him later—and side-eyes Baekhyun. He's not humming today. Even as he jokes around, there are bags under his eyes.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Baekhyun breathes deeply, mustering himself up, and for a moment, he just looks fragile. His frame seems smaller than usual and he looks paper thin and _tired_ , like he’s crumbling a little bit somewhere behind his eyes but still frozen in his age-old mask of ever happy, ever ready Baekhyun. And then the moment passes, and the turns to Kyungsoo with his signature blinding megawatt smile. 

"Obviously," he says. "The better question is if you're gonna be okay—I really don't think a workaholic like you is gonna be able to feasibly take a month of doing nothing. I give you ten days until you're bored out of your mind."

Kyungsoo scoffs. "You underestimate my capacity for boring things."

Baekhyun laughs loudly and leans forward to outstretch a dirt stained hand with an impish glint in his eye, a clear offer. 

"Wanna bet?"

 

.

 

The good news is, Baekhyun is wrong. It doesn't take ten days.

The bad news is, it takes six.

On day one, Kyungsoo spends the majority of his time with Baekhyun, including accompanying him around lunchtime to the ship labs, where the scientists and greenhouse workers have been desperately trying to create new soil formula (preferably, one that actually works). They pass three different people whom Baekhyun has had probably ill-advised relationships with. The most recent, Park Chanyeol, a kid way too tall for his own good, and one who dated Baekhyun for all of 45 minutes before realizing they were better off as friends, makes them lunch. Kyungsoo thinks Chanyeol might have accidentally gotten some chemicals in there, but he doesn’t complain.

Kyungsoo dislikes the labs—they’re cold and gray, and full of people who won’t even think about smiling back if you smiled at them. The exception to this is, of course, Chanyeol, whose constant and manic grin in combination with the whole “frizzy-hair lightly electrocuted” look makes him look less happy and more somewhat mad. Baekhyun thinks he’s hilarious, at least. 

Regardless, day two, Kyungsoo goes back to the labs for lack of other things to do. Chanyeol shows him some chemical combination that produces a “totally awesome stink bomb!”.  
Kyungsoo vomits. He doesn’t go back to the labs after that.

On day three, Kyungsoo decides to visit his personal library—it’s not a real library, of course, the ship couldn’t afford such frivolous rooms—it’s a forgotten storage closet with a ripped plush chair and dozens of old boxes of books. It’s from there that Kyungsoo steals the books he reads on his shift. Many are waterlogged and frayed at the seams, remnants from times before the flood. Others were written by the first pioneers on the ship, reminiscing on what they left behind and struggling to imagine how life would continue from that point on. The persepective is always difficult for Kyungsoo to understand, but he thinks it’s interesting, nonetheless.

Recently, books have been disappearing. Kyungsoo had been attempting to investigate, but he didn’t know anyone in the ship who even knew about this closet, much less one who would be interested in reading outdated novels. It’s a useless endeavor that frustrates him to no end.

Kyungsoo spends a lot of day three hunting for one of his favorite books (a ridiculously old transcendentalist book by Thoreau), but rips the tiny room apart to no avail. He eventually gives up and rereads _The Little Prince_ for the millionth time.

Day Four—Kyungsoo sleeps. He cleans his entire dorm. He does his laundry, he does his mother’s laundry, he makes his father’s bed. He scrubs the floors. He makes himself a really big lunch—as well as he can with their few food portions, anyway. He makes the big lunch for his mother as well. He volunteers to clean his neighbor’s dorm. He takes three showers just because he can. He sleeps more. He counts sheep. He counts his toes. There are only ten of them, which is profoundly disappointing.

Day Five. Kyungsoo is despondent. 

He decides to swing by the kitchen and talk to Chen, the ration maker. Chen lets him help in carrying foods from the greenhouse to the kitchen area, where they’ll be reapportioned into airtight bags.

“I’ve been having to slowly decrease the amount in each portion every day,” Chen says, with a offhand smile that ends up being more of a grimace. “It won’t be long until people notice.”

“How much food do we actually have?” Kyungsoo asks.

“From the greenhouse? Not much. But the ship mayor tells me we have a large supply of emergency portions in reserves.” This was true—Kyungsoo had seen the reserves on camera.

Kyungsoo laughs lightly. “So we’re not in the shithole yet, basically.”

He receives a wry look. “Basically.”

Chen goes back into creating rations, cutting and sorting and wrapping, while Kyungsoo watches him and whistles songs his mother used to like under his breath. Chen looks at the pack in his hands and lets out a long sigh.

“This is for the Choi’s in room 125—their little boy can eat. Sure won’t be any leftovers from portions this size.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Kyungsoo admonishes. He elbows Chen, and, in an attempt to lighten the mood, says, “That chubby little kid might could stand to eat less anyway.” 

Although he’s speaking light-heartedly, Kyungsoo has words spinning and spinning in his head—the words of Jongin, saying _I only take the scraps_. There won’t be any scraps left from this. There might not be any scraps left for a while.

 _Don’t think nor worry about the underground stowaway you’re not supposed to know of_ , Kyungsoo thinks desperately to himself, but the thoughts happen anyway.

When it’s time for the kitchens to close, Chen slips a small ration packet into Kyungsoo’s coat pocket discretely. 

“For helping me out today,” he says with a wink. Chen winks a lot. “And for listening to my endless ramblings. You always make the day a little more interesting, Kyungsoo.”

Kyungsoo looks down at the packet in his hand aghast. “You know I can’t take this.”

“Just _do it_ , kid. That’s too small to get through normal regulations anyway. It’s a gift.”

"But Chen, I—", Kyungsoo freezes with it in his hand and looks at the stubbornness on Chen’s face. “…..Thanks.”

Chen laughs brightly. “Have a snack on me, yeah?”

On his walk back to his family’s dorm, the packet feels like it's burning a hole in Kyungsoo’s pocket.

 

On the sixth day, Kyungsoo can’t stop thinking about the extra ration packet—he technically should have a lot more, actually, as a result of the bet with Sehun, but Kyungsoo wasn’t heartless enough to really steal Sehun's portions from him. But more accurately, Kyungsoo can’t stop thinking about the extra ration packet in relation to Jongin, who is probably hungry and alone (and attractive) on the bottom of the ship right now.

Kyungsoo wishes he didn’t have a heart.

He makes sure to wait until no one is around to see him creep down to the basement—they would ask questions that he wouldn’t have answers to— and climbs down the many steps to where he knows Jongin is. Opening the basement door is much less scary this time.

“You’re reading my book,” is the first thing Kyungsoo says. It wasn’t exactly how he planned to start the conversation. 

But it’s true. Jongin is sprawled out innocently on the floor, holding open _Walden_ , the Thoreau book, on the basement floor, which Kyungsoo had spent ages looking for not even two days before.

“I found this book,” Jongin shoots back, but it’s with an innocent look.

"Yeah, well, it’s mine. You stole it from my library.”

Jonging raises a bemused eyebrow. “The storage closet?”

“I’m the only one who ever goes in there,” Kyungsoo says begrudgingly. “So it’s essentially mine.”

“Ah,” Jongin says, closing the book in his lap and sitting up. “But by that logic, this is my basement. So I could kick you out right now.”

“Don’t. I brought you food." This conversation is not at all going like he thought it would. Kyungsoo is more out of touch with any kind of smooth-talking side of him than he thought.

Yet at this, Jongin freezes.

“I don’t want pity or to take your food. You should keep it."

“It was an extra—it’s yours.” Kyungsoo pulls the packet from yesterday out of his pocket and tosses it to Jongin. Jongin easily catches it and looks at it with gratitude (and still a degree of reservation) in his eyes. But he must have been hungry, and Kyungsoo has no intention of letting anyone on this ship suffer. He could call it a part of his job in security, if he ignored the “anyone” in question being a stowaway. The point is still valid, he decides.

“Thanks," Jongin says. "Come sit down with me—I can’t give you anything, but I can repay you with company, I guess.”

“You could repay me by giving back my stolen property,” Kyungsoo says sarcasticallly, but he moves to sit next to Jongin anyway. He did come all the way down here, and it’s not like he has anything else better to do. Jongin laughs. 

“So. Thoreau,” Jongin smiles, leaning forward with his legs crossed as he takes a piece out of his newfound ration packet.

“Thoreau,” Kyungsoo affirms. “Among many other books.”

“You ever think about it?”

“About what?”

“You know. Before. The world and the wilderness and whatnot.”

Kyungsoo pauses. He’s never talked about this with anyone before—it wasn’t explicitly forbidden, it just wasn’t done. People didn't care about the world before—unless, apparently, they were Kyungsoo or Jongin.

“Yeah,” he admits. “Pretty often. Sometimes it doesn’t feel real.”

The look on Jongin’s face is one that Kyungsoo can't understand. His lips are turned up in a smile, but his eyes are neither happy nor sad—they’re just far away. Kyungsoo thinks again about how little he knows about Jongin, and where he came from, and what he’s done.

“It’s real, alright. All of it was."

"You speak as if you had firsthand experience."

Jongin raises his eyebrow. "Maybe I did. This isn't the part where I tell you my entire life's story."

"Oh, right, of course. That part will just have to come later, then."

A huffed laugh. "You could always kickstart it by telling me yours."

"What's to tell?" Kyungsoo says with a shrug. "I was born on a ship, like everyone else. I work in security. It’s not all that interesting."

"I think you're pretty interesting," Jongin says. "For example, you read books about transcendentalism and are a Sehun rapping-enabler and somehow acquire extra ration packets and have dirt on your sleeve, by the way." Kyungsoo hurriedly brushes off his shoulder. "And you danced with me," Jongin smiles.

Kyungsoo feels his face growing red. He's been really good at not thinking about that particular lapse in judgement.

“The dancing was all you. And will you stop talking if I let you concede your point?"

"I'm just saying—everyone's interesting. That's the thing about people. Lives are only boring if you look surface-deep."

"And I'm just saying that you might could stand to calm down with the philosophy books, Mr. Really-Deep," Kyungsoo says with a snort—but he'll be the first to admit that the conversation is taking an interesting turn. “Although yeah, I see your point."

Jongin begins spinning a story of some little girl he used to know, complete with a whole list of strange quirks, some of which have Kyungsoo laughing out loud. Kyungsoo follows with stories of the weird shit he sees on the cameras sometimes—like the guy who does a rain dance in the fourth floor hallway every single morning, or the young couple with a toddler who sprint literally every single place they walk.

The conversation turns to family, then weird things they do, then funniest teenage stories, then complaining about things their friends did when they were teenagers, then full circle back to the best books they've read. Even when Jongin talks about the past or family, he's intentionally vague about where he was and what he was doing at that time. Kyungsoo doesn't push it. 

He looses track of how long they talk. Kyungsoo normally isn't this chatty, either—but it's just so _easy_ , and Jongin laughs loudly at jokes that probably aren't actually that funny, and Kyungsoo find himself enjoying the free-flowing pace probably a lot more than he should have. It's been so long since he's had a one on one conversation with someone who was actually focused on him—with Sehun and Baekhyun and Chen and his parents, someone is always working while talking. 

They reach a lull—Jongin has long finished his ration packet by now, and the silence is comfortable. Kyungsoo leans back and closes his eyes.

"Shit," he says, sitting up suddenly. "What time is it? I've probably been down here for too long."

"I don't have a watch, so I dunno. It's probably late."

Kyungsoo sighs. "I have to go back up and let my friends and family know I'm not dead, at least." He stands up. "It was- It was nice, talking."

"Yeah," Jongin says. He's leaned back too. He looks peaceful. 

Kyungsoo is almost out the door when he hears a "wait" behind him. He turns. Jongin has cracked one eye open. 

"I never got your name," he says.

Kyungsoo freezes, then feels a laugh bubbling in his chest. This acquaintance, this friendship, this whatever they were going to call it—it was all so backwards. None of the rules of stereotypical human interaction seemed to be applying to whatever was going on between him and Jongin. All this time, and he didn't even know his damn name.

"Kyungsoo," he says.

"Kyunsgoo," Jongin repeats. Kyungsoo pretends desperately that the sound of his name on Jongin's lips doesn't make his heart pitter-patter in his chest. "Come back to visit me soon, Kyungsoo."

And although the words are opposite, they're just as much a bad idea this time as they were the first—

"I will," Kyungsoo says.

 

.

 

"Fess up," Baekhyun bites out, indignantly.

He's standing in Kyungsoo's doorway at an ungodly hour in the morning with his hands on his hips. Kyungsoo is still half asleep.

"Fess up to what?"

"What the hell did you discover? A hot date? A portal to another world? Enlightenment?"

"I haven't.....discovered anything, Baekhyun."

Baek whistles a huffed breath through his teeth. "But see, that's where you have to be wrong. Because I figured that you'd just been ignoring me for the past two and a half weeks because you were too ashamed to admit you lost the bet—but then I swung by the security center and checked the log and lo and behold! The only time you've been recorded on shift are the times Sehun has faked for you. I talked to everyone there, no one has seen you for _twenty-three days_.” 

He leans forward and pokes Kyungsoo in the chest. "The Do Kyungsoo I know and love would never be able to spend twenty-three days doing _fucking nothing_ and not working."

"I told you you underestimated me," Kyungsoo says smugly.

Baekhyun is not not impressed with this, and raises an eyebrow. "I'm moving in until you tell me what you've been doing."

"What, Baek, don't—" Baekhyun shoves past Kyungsoo's protests and enters Kyungsoo's family dorm. "C'mon, you'll wake my parents up—"

"This bed is really comfy," Bakehyun says loudly and obnoxiously, plopping down on Kyungsoo's mattress. "I can't wait to stay here forever."

“C’mon Baek, get up.” 

“Getting up is only for people whose best friends don’t keep secrets.”

Kyungsoo sighs dramatically. "Alright, alright, asshole—I'll tell you."

The truth was, Kyungsoo had spent almost every single one of those days with Jongin. And he hadn't necessarily been _avoiding_ Baekhyun, it's just that Baek had always been granted with the ability to see right through him, and Kyungsoo was a coward who wasn't ready to address whatever he had going on yet.

He still didn't really know whatever was going on with Jongin.

Kyungsoo usually came in the morning—after picking up around the dorm and telling his mom he was going out to the security labs (he wasn't), he would swing by the ration counter and pick up that day's food supply from Chen, who he usually had a quick conversation with. Then he would discretely cut up some of his family rations for the day and slip them into a smaller pouch so he could lie and tell Jongin it was an extra. Then, he'd slink down to the basement and do whatever Jongin had planned that day.

It wasn't monotonous. Jongin was the only person he knew who could live trapped in a basement and never be bored. Some days he would insist that Kyungsoo go run up and grab them some things to read, others he insisted he teach Kyungsoo how to waltz (this idea died really quickly and also involved more touching than Kyungsoo was comfortable with which yes, was awkward, and yes, both their faces were red.)  
Still others Jongin would just want to talk, or laugh, or once, he poured ashes left near a furnace all over the ground and insisted that they paint "ash-pictures" with their feet. Kyungsoo was slowly realizing that Jongin was actually just a giant three year old.

He was also slowly realizing that Jongin was really, very touchy, and he was realizing that he didn't quite mind it so much. It starts with Jongin leaning into Kyungsoo when Kyungsoo talks, placing his hand casually on his arm, or gripping Kyungsoo playfully when Jongin enters one of his laughing fits. It progresses to Jongin sitting with their legs always pressed side by side, flittingly grabbing Kyungsoo's hands and wrists when he wants Kyungsoo to follow him, idly swinging his arms around Kyungsoo's shoulders to pull him close or rubbing circles with his thumb into the back of Kyungsoo's neck.

The places Jongin touches him are always left too warm. Kyungsoo feels like he can feel them burn for the rest of the day.

He'd also noticed the _staring_. Jongin had a habit of looking people directly in the eye when they talked, giving them undivided attention, which was weird enough to get used to—but he's started staring at Kyungsoo _all_ the time, and if Kyungsoo ever looked over, Jongin would always, always be looking right at him. 

"What?" Kyungsoo would always ask, because what the fuck, it made him self conscious, and Jongin would smile softly and say "Nothing,” and he wouldn't look away.

A couple of times Kyungsoo stays until nighttime and Jongin asks him to accompany him sneaking around the ship. It always feels so dangerous, being out in the open with Jongin—like at any second they'll be caught and Kyungsoo's world and Jongin's world and every other world there might be would just come screeching to a halt. They never get caught, though. They come close, sometimes—more than once they have to hurriedly grab each other and sprint, breathing heavily and rounding a corner to shove themselves under something and hide from the patrol. Kyungsoo almost runs straight into his own father, once.

But after all these times Kyungsoo turns to the side in whatever cramped space they're in and Jongin is there, breathing heavy and hearts pounding and they make eye contact and Jongin smiles, pearly white teeth against tan skin and that— that makes it all worth it.

Kyungsoo realizes, of course, that he's been a terrible friend. This is the exact thing that the mantra "bros before hoes" told him not to do. He shouldn't have been avoiding Baekhyun, or shirking off his job, or lying to his parents and to Jongin with the ration packets or not reporting a stowaway or an assortment of other things. But Jongin is warm and funny and intriguing and Kyungsoo felt like he was falling helplessly down a slippery slope in which all paths led to whatever this relationship was, and before he knew it, almost a month had passed and Kyungsoo felt like he and Jongin had been friends for years.

But back in his room, Kyungsoo doesn't know how to start.

"I'm waiting," Baekhyun says, but is interrupted by the sound of a loud bell over the ship intercom—signaling that the mayor and council of the ship are about to have a meeting. Baekhyun groans.

"Shit," he says, "that's my cue."

"Why are _you_ important enough to be in a council meeting?"

"They wanted an opinion from the greenhouse, and the others nominated me. 'Hardest worker', or some stuff like that. I really think they just didn't wanna deal with it."

"Yeah, but, opinion on what?"

Baekhyun looks at him incredulously. "God, Soo, where have you _been_? Everyone's all up in arms after the whole Minseok nightmare. They called a meeting to decide if we should start using the emergency supplies. Fina-fucking-lly, if you ask me."

Kyungsoo doesn't know what the "Minseok nightmare" is. Kyungsoo feels like he's been living in the netherworld for the past month.

"I have to go," Baekhyun sighs, standing up and gathering himself, and Kyungsoo feels cripplingly guilty about how tired and fragile Baekhyun looks. He's been dealing with all kinds of shit out here by himself while Kyungsoo has been holding hands with Jongin in the basement. 

"Baek," Kyungsoo says, reaching out for Baekhyun's arm and grabbing it to stop him. "I'm sorry."

Baekhyun's face crumbles just a little bit.

"Just—don't do that again, okay? Don't just drop me like that. God."

"Of course. Fuck, I'll tell you everything, and I'll keep you included, and— and I'm sorry. I promise."

Baekhyun just nods and shakes his arm free before walking out the door.

Goddammit.

Kyungsoo feels (well-deservedly) terrible now. He sighs. His little honeymoon phase was sweet, but, it was time to get back to work.

 

.

 

"Holy SHIT. He lives."

"Shut up, Sehun."

"You know, when we made that bet, I never thought you'd _actually_ stay away for a month. You're never that irresponsible. What the fuck, Kyungsoo."

Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow. "Maybe you shouldn't make bets you don't mean."

"Yeah well, maybe you should stop hanging out with your boyfriend in the attic all day."

"It's the basement—wait, Sehun, how—"

"I watch the _cameras_ all fuckin day you nerd, twice as often now thanks to you. Of course I see you up there."

Kyungsoo feels his face growing red. "It's _down_ there, and I—you—agh, whatever. I'm here now. Shut up."

Sehun smiles a lecherous grin. And moves his chair over to pat the space next to him.

"Feel free to do as much work as you want, ol' partner ol' pal. I think I deserve a month break."

Kyungsoo settles in his seat and briefly familiarizes himself with all the screens and buttons again. It feels like it's been forever. He looks at the sea chart screen and pauses. They're not on the course they're supposed to be heading on. 

"Sehun, why are we heading east?"

Sehun rolls his eyes. "We changed course to meet up with the Beijing ship. Their medics are supposed to help with Minseok."

"What-" Kyungsoo pauses and bites his lip. "What happened with that, anyway?"

"You don't know? I would've thought Chen would've told you."

"He didn't."

Sehun sighs. "You know the Kims—yeah, I know there's a lot of Kims, but the ones in room 218—it's their youngest."

Kyungsoo did, in fact, know the family in question. They were uber-religious, very nice people, but the kind that believed in extreme modesty and didn't believe in birth control. They had anywhere from eight to ten kids—Kyungsoo couldn't keep track—and the ship council had allowed it as long as they didn't request for a bigger room or family rations larger than regulation. They had agreed.

"With the family portions getting smaller and smaller, I guess there wasn't enough to go around for all of them. The youngest, Minseok—he's a fuckin baby, man— he just suddenly got really sick the other day. They said it was long-term malnutrition or something," Sehun sighs. "I dunno, dude. When a baby starts to die of starvation—that's when people start to freak."

Kyungsoo makes a sad and disappointed noise and glances over at the screen in the corner—the camera that watches the emergency supply room. He'd never paid much attention to it (it was locked and guarded, after all), but he can see the stacks and stacks of ration packets just sitting there, unused and unopened. Kids were starving and food was wasting away in a warehouse, only feet away.

"Why the hell didn't they start using the emergency supplies earlier?" Kyungsoo asks, but he's not expecting an answer. 

Sehun just snorts. "Isn't _that_ the question of the day?"

 

Before he leaves his shift that night, he shoots a quick message to the Beijing ship.

 **SHIPID1102:** Hey, can you ask whatever medic is coming over when we meet to bring an extra medic uniform? Please don't ask why.

 **SHIPID1228:** lol kk sure  
**SHIPID1228:** hey giv this drawin to the sick lil kid  
**SHIPID1228:** it is a portrait i made he wil feel honored and bettr  
**SHIPID1228:** Attached: the-illest-baby.jpeg

 **SHIPID1102:** Thanks, Kris.

 

.

 

Kyungsoo meets up with Baekhyun the next day. He explains everything, from meeting Jongin to hanging out with Jongin to being slightly infatuated and also afraid and accidentally ignoring Baekhyun in favor of Jongin, and yes, Baek is still his best friend, and yes, he has a plan for Baekhyun and Jongin to meet, and yes, he's really sorry and he will never do it again. Baekhyun cries. He gets snot on Kyungsoo's shoulder when he flings his arms around him, but Kyungsoo doesn't mind.

Baekhyun tells him that they agreed to start using the emergency supplies at the meeting yesterday. The public seems placated by this. Chen seems less so. He doesn't say much when Kyungsoo drops by, just sits there and sorts packets with tense shoulders and says _hey, kid, sorry, I'm just real tired._ It will take time to open and sort the emergency supplies, the council says. Please bear with us and deal with small ration packets a little longer.

When Kyungsoo has down time, he still sneaks down to see Jongin. He tells him about Baekhyun and about going back to work and about Minseok, who Jongin is very, very worried about. Kyungsoo thinks that's probably because Jongin is an infant himself.

"If food is actually that scarce, how do you always get extra packets for me?" Jongin wonders, and hits Kyungsoo with his mega-pout until Kyungsoo admits that the "extra packets" were actually his. Jongin is upset by this, but Kyungsoo insists over and over again that it was his choice, that he wanted to, shut up Jongin.

The days pass like this. The Beijing ship looms ever closer. Kyungsoo sneaks down to see Minseok, once—he is pale and bundled and way too skinny for a baby. It makes Kyungsoo sick.

On the day when the two ships finally intersect, Kyungsoo volunteers to be the one to escort the medics to the hospital wing. The lead doctor they send is tall and pale and kind of spacey looking, but even though his eyes can't seem to focus in one place at the same time, he is pleasant. 

"You're the one who wanted the extra uniform, yes? Kris said to look for the tiny wide-eyed one. I'm Yixing." His Korean is accented, but still good, which surprises Kyungsoo.

"Er, yeah," Kyungsoo says. "I can't really explain why I need the uniform, but—"

"I don't care," Yixing interrupts. Kyungsoo looks at him in surprise. Yixing smiles gently—he genuinely just seems to not give a fuck. He also has a dimple. Yixing delicately presses one of the Chinese medical uniforms in Kyungsoo's arms and starts walking aimlessly in a direction, dimple-ing all the way.

Kyungsoo decides he likes Yixing.

He leads the team to Minseok's room, where they divide and conquer—some other people have fallen ill, but Minseok is still the worst—and Yixing settles next to the boy, tsk-ing lightly. He sets to work, with medication and liquids and tools Kyungsoo doesn't understand. While he seems rather off the rest of the time, when it comes to healing, Yixing clearly knows what he's doing. 

"This is not sustainable," Yixing says suddenly, after some time working.

"What isn't?"

"The ships. These medical supplies. We were never meant to go this long." He gestures to the medical kit in front of him. "Some of these medications expired years ago. The boats were a band-aid solution—humans were supposed to figure out a better plan by now. But, here we are, still here, with our children resorted to this—" 

He places his hand gently on Minseok's forehead. The boy's eyes are closed, and his chest is rising and falling slowly—he looks peaceful, but not better.

"He is simply the first. He will not be the last," Yixing says. His voice is quiet. 

Kyungsoo opens his mouth and closes it a few times. He can't decide what he's supposed to say. He looks around—at the doctors, at the patients, at the whitewashed walls inside a glorified floating tin can with an uncertain future.

"Yixing," he starts. "What if what he have left isn't enough? The supplies, the food, the plan—what if it all just—just isn't enough?"

Yixing turns to him and smiles. He still has his dimple, still has his unfocused eyes and pleasant aura, but his look chills Kyungsoo to the bone. He does not sound sad. He does not sound accusatory. He is just stating a fact that he has long come to accept.

"It won't be," Yixing says.

And for the first time since the ship started falling apart, Kyungsoo is afraid.

 

.

 

He swings by the basement immediately after leaving the infirmary. He's still a bit shaken up, but he doesn't let it show.

"Present for you," Kyungsoo says with a grin, tossing the medical uniform at Jongin. Jongin catches it and looks at it confusedly. 

"What is this?"

"There's med officers from the Beijing ship crawling all around here today. You walk around wearing this, no one will look twice."

Jongin looks up in awe. "You got this so I could go outside during the day?"

"Don't you want to?"

"Yeah, of course! I mean, I—," He looks up, beaming. "Thanks, Kyungsoo."

"As payment you have to meet with Baekhyun, though. I promised him," Kyungsoo jokes.

Jongin is still practically glowing. He laughs. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

 

If it was strange being out and about with Jongin at night, when the ship was empty, it's even stranger during the day. Kyungsoo is, for one, not used to seeing Jongin in so much light, or in a neatly pressed uniform, and it takes all of his willpower not to stare at Jongin helplessly the entire time they're exploring. The boy is so unknowingly and infuriatingly gorgeous.

It's also weird seeing Jongin just simply in the presence of other people—for as long as Kyungsoo has known him, it had only ever been the two of them. Now, he was smiling and turning to people milling about, making casual conversation (although not too much, a Chinese medic can't be too good at Korean, after all), and to Kyungsoo, the whole situation is baffling.

But Jongin is having the time of his life. They swing by the security labs and he and Sehun scream when they see each other (and it's one of those long held rising-inflection screams too, the kind that start at an aaaaa and end with an AAAA), and they invent a secret handshake. Jongin gets his palm read by the woman on the back end of floor 3—she tells him love is in his future. He looks at Kyungsoo when she says this. He sprints down the hallway with the couple who sprints everywhere, offers his arm to the old woman who collapses on a regular basis, meets Chen and laughs animatedly with him for 20 minutes until Kyungsoo literally has to drag him away. They go to the labs and Jongin is very receptive to the idea of making Chanyeol's "totally awesome stink bomb". They make one and throw it into the fourth floor communal showers, and they roll over laughing when they hear people running out of there gagging, naked and afraid.

Meeting Baekhyun goes about as horribly as Kyungsoo thought it would go. Baekhyun takes one look at Jongin, gasps and says, "Kyungsoo, you didn't tell me your boytoy was a _hunk_ ," which has both Jongin and Kyungsoo burning bright red and Baekhyun laughing at the chaotic destruction he knows he is causing. The hours are filled with teasing and the loss of any dignity Kyungsoo may have possibly had left, which, admittedly, isn't much. 

They've settled into the corner of the greenhouse and are leaning against the back wall when the sun starts setting. Kyungsoo and Jongin are both dead tired—it'd been an incredible, but longass day. Baekhyun runs off to go bother Chanyeol and his newfound girlfriend, Taeyeon, who is both way too pretty and way too good for someone like Byun Baekhyun.

Kyungsoo feels the staring again. He turns to the side and there Jongin is, very much present and very much right there, basking in the orange glow of the setting sun. Ordinarily, Kyungsoo would look away when he sees Jongin staring at him, or tease him for being creepy. This time, he doesn't.

"It was a good day," Jongin says, quiet. "The best in a long time, actually. Thank you."

"Yeah. Anytime."

Kyungsoo find himself getting lost in the curve of Jongin's eyelashes, the light dust of skin pigments on his nose, the way his lips naturally pout, the way he's looking at Kyungsoo like he's the best thing on earth, and the way he's so close. He feels himself being pulled in, a gravitational anomaly, leaning, is Jongin closer than before? He can't tell, Jongin's breath is on his lips, he's probably going to kiss him, now he is kissing him—

Oh. 

This was happening.

Jongin jerks back as if he were shocked. 

"Shit," he says, "shit, shit, shit, I probably just ruined everything, shit, I'm sorry I really didn't mean—"

"Jongin." Kyungsoo smiles. "You didn't."

"I—shit—what?"

"You didn't ruin anything."

Jongin gapes like a drowning fish, opening his mouth and closing it over and over again. "I—you mean—"

Kyungsoo feels a giggle rising up in his chest—how the fuck did he not know this was going to happen, honestly, all the signs were there—and Jongin just looks so flabbergasted and confused and adorable and Kyungsoo really wants to kiss him again. So he does.

It's slow. It's not a hurried kiss or a passionate kiss but really just a kiss, slow-moving and melding and sweet and Kyungsoo can feel Jongin's fingers grasp at his arms and make fists in his shirt sleeves, can feel himself smile against Jongin's lips and Jongin sigh just ever so slightly. They break apart and Kyungsoo is dizzy.

"That's what I mean," Kyungsoo whispers, his forehead pressed against Jongin's.

He sees Jongin's slow smile start to take over his face, sees his eyes glow with so much light and fun and adoration—the same kind of light that danced in his eyes all that time ago when they first met, dancing in the basement. And Kyungsoo thinks again about how Jongin is so different, so much better, so much warmer in the pit of Kyungsoo's ribs than anyone else. 

"Okay," Jongin says. He looks dazed.

Kyungsoo laughs.

 

.

 

The time period after the Best Day Ever is joyous and fun and full of hand holding and stolen kisses and endless teasing from Baekhyun, which has Kyungsoo grumbling on the outside but giddy on the inside.

Unfortunately, it doesn't last.

Kyungsoo walks into his shift one morning and Sehun is already there, stock-still and as white as a sheet. His eyes are frozen forward, but his hands are shaking—he looks halfway torn between terrified and confused.

"Kyungsoo," he says. "Kyungsoo, I found something and I don't know what it means."

"What do you mean, you _found something_?"

"I mean—come look."

He drags Kyungsoo over to behind the screens, where all the inputs are. Kyungsoo usually doesn't fuck with this stuff (he's just surveillance, after all, the tech people can deal with that) and to be honest, he has no idea how to interpret the bundles of wires that seem to have Sehun shaken up. But he knows that Sehun has always been interested in hacking and otherwise illegal things, so he trusts that something back there is probably wrong.

"I fucked with an inputter and transmitter to call the Beijingers and rap battle, right? Well, I remembered yesterday I never set it back up, so I came back here to do that. And I found—" Sehun breathes deep. "It's not the only inputter that's been tampered with."

"What? Why would anyone other than you mess with the cameras? What room is it?"

"It's.....the emergency supply room."

Shit.

"Shit."

Kyungsoo looks at the screen in question—it's full of supplies still, sitting there frozen. But—something is off. God, why didn't he notice before? If the government was supposed to be sorting the supplies to give out, he should have seen workers in there, or at least some members of the council—but there was nothing, there had never been anything, and the camera showing the supply room had been showing them this same damn picture for years.

"It's frozen on one frame," Sehun says, "I can't tell how old the frame is. The wiring is all fucked up. Kyungsoo—something's not right. Why would they..." he trails off.

"We have to figure out a way to get in there," Kyungsoo says. "Today. We have to break in tonight." Kyungsoo has a feeling he knows why they would hide the emergency supplies, and he knows Sehun does, too. But neither of them are willing to say it out loud. 

Sehun bites his lip. He still looks like he's going to be sick. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

They spend the rest of the day in system management trying to hack their way into the locking mechanism on the supply room, or at least acquire the passcode for the door. Sehun manages to rewrite the program so that he can replace the pin with his own code (he sets the new password to be 80085, designed to look like "BOOBS", and whatever respect Kyungsoo had drudged up for Sehun after seeing him do his cool hacking thing is completely shattered in that moment.)

Kyungsoo tells Baekhyun of their plan to break in, who agrees readily to come with them. Kyungsoo considers inviting Jongin, but knows that if they get caught they'll be in enough trouble as is, and the last thing they need is a stowaway in their party.

That night, they slink over to the back end of the ship, where the "important" rooms are. Kyungsoo feels lucky that he got so much practice creeping around the ship unnoticed with Jongin. Sehun and Baekhyun are, unfortunately, less experienced. Kyungsoo almost considers taping Baekhyun's mouth shut so that he'll stop loudly squeaking every time they hear a noise. 

When they arrive at the heavy, fortified door of the emergency supplies, they freeze. There's a patrolman stationed right outside it.

"Fuck," Sehun hisses.

Baekhyun places a hand on each of their shoulders and Sehun and Kyungsoo turn around to find him giving them a grim look.

"There is, obviously, only one thing to do," Baekhyun says. "I sacrifice myself so you guys can go in."

"Baek, don't be melodramti-"

" _Let me be heroic._ "

Kyungsoo sighs. Sehun nods. He looks very solemn. Kyungsoo hates them both.

Baekhyun ducks out of the corner they're hiding and sprints down the hallway, screaming the entire time. The guard, of course, starts and then sprints after him, yelling, "Passenger! Passenger, halt!". Kyungsoo and Sehun have the path in front of them wide open.

Sehun types in his boob passcode, snickering while he does so—Kyungsoo rolls his eyes and elbows Sehun into the room as soon as the doors swing open.

And then he freezes again.

There's nothing. 

There's nothing in there.

Not a single ration packet; just empty walls, empty floors, empty shelves. The only things in the room are a handful of lifeboats in the corner and a fine layer of dust.

"Maybe," Sehun wets his lips, "maybe they already moved it all?"

"....No. No way in hell. There's dust everywhere, Sehun. This place has been empty for.... for a long time."

Kyungsoo's head is reeling. Of course the ship wouldn't wait so long to break out emergency supplies—they had been using them for months, maybe even years. And now they were out of supplies entirely. Whatever was in the kitchen with Chen right now was the damn last of it. There was nothing left. 

The entire boat was counting on supplies to save them that didn't exist. 

Kyungsoo doesn't know what to think, what to feel. What were they going to do? When was the ship going to find out? Was there a plan? Were they going to starve?

Sehun tugs at Kyungsoo's wrist. "C'mon, Soo, that guard is going to come back, we need to get out of here-"

But Kyungsoo is frozen solid, staring at the smudged place on the floors where Sehun's footprints interrupted the dust, thinking, thinking, fearing. Sehun tugs harder. "Come _on_ -"

There's a large flash of light behind them and a voice amplified through a speaker. The guard has called backup.

"Passengers. Raise your arms above your head and walk out of the supply cache. I repeat, raise your arms above your head and walk out of the supply cache. You are in violation of ship code. You will be detained. I repeat, you will be detained until further questioning."

Sehun looks at Kyungsoo fearfully, and Kyungsoo can see the question in his eyes— _do we make a break for it? do we run?_

But Kyungsoo just raises his arms above his head and walks forward. There's nothing left to do. (You can't run from starvation, after all.)

 

.

 

When Kyungsoo wakes up, he doesn't know where he is. His arms have been tied behind his back, and he's laying on what seems to be a bed, albeit not a very comfortable one.

Ah, right. He's being detained. 

The guard startles when he sees Kyungsoo is awake. 

"Oh, you, um." The guard clears his throat. "Council Leader Suho wants to speak to you specifically. Please follow me to his chambers, and don't, uh, try anything funny."

Kyungsoo just nods and slowly stands up. It is not the easiest task with his hands behind his back. He follows the guard out of the little detention area—calling it a jail cell is giving it a little too much grandeur—and walks slowly in a parade of shame across the ship. He can feel people staring. He hopes word of this hasn't gotten back to his parents, but he knows that's a being a bit too ambitious. He has no idea what happened to Baekhyun, or Sehun. He has no idea what's happening to him.

The guard knocks on the elegant white door. The council members get better quarters than the rest of the ship, by far, the bastards.

"Come in," comes a pleasant voice from inside.

The room is not exactly lavish, but it's better than what Kyungsoo is used to. There's a man in high council uniform sitting at a coffee table drinking tea, with a chair across from him. Kyungsoo doesn't ask where he got the tea—that was a luxury good, and Kyungsoo hates that this guy has it when people are sick and hurting in the hospital ward downstairs. Upon looking closer, Kyungsoo realizes the man is the mayor's son.

"So you're one of the ones who gave my guards quite a fright last night," he says, setting down his teacup and smiling. "Don't just stand there. You, untie his hands and let him sit down."

"R-right away, Suho," the guard stutters, and fumbles with the ties on Kyungsoo's hands. Kyungsoo rubs his wrists and winces once they're finally free. 

Suho side-eyes the guard. "Thanks. You can leave now." 

The guard practically trips over himself to get out the door. Poor bloke is not particularly cut out for his job, it seems. 

Suho looks to Kyungsoo as if he going to speak, to make introductions, but Kyungsoo is silent. Suho just smiles.

"You saw the emergency supplies, then?" His face is tight.

"Why did you lie?" Kyungsoo blurts. "Why didn't you tell anyone when we started using the backups?" 

"And cause widespread panic? What would that have done for us? No, no one wants to know that we've delved into the last resort. It's just human nature—the desire to believe there's something else that you can rely on. That you're not at rock bottom."

"Yeah, well, we _are_ at rock bottom, asshole. When were you going to tell them that?"

"I was hoping I wouldn't have to," Suho says softly. "You must understand—I have always believed in the power of human nature. Or, human innovation. When my father and I decided to approve using the emergency supplies, I was certain that our bright team of greenhouse workers and lab specialists would work out a solution. Humans have a funny way of rising to the occasion like that."

"But they didn't find a solution."

Suho laughs quietly, and it isn't a happy one. It is lost, and sad, and resigned. "No," he says, "No, I suppose they didn't."

"And what the fuck are we going to do now? What's your plan, Mr. Human-Nature?"

Suho just looks down at his tea. He does not move. 

"We hope," he says. "We hope, and we wait."

Kyungsoo scoffs loudly. "Hoping won't save this ship from starving to death. Hope is too late for the kids like Minseok. For all of us."

Suho doesn't answer.

Kyungsoo has had enough of this high-council bullshit. He explodes upward from the ugly plush chair, bumping into the coffee table on the way up and causing some of the tea to spill. He marches toward the door. He doesn't give a damn.

It's a shame, he thinks. In other circumstances, in another place or time, maybe, he could have liked Suho. He seems kind, and like a good listener—placating a bit, maybe, but still kind. If Suho were not the ultra-rich son of the mayor, making the thoughtless decision he thought was best, one that would destroy everything Kyungsoo held dear, they could have been friends. But these were the circumstances under which they met, and Kyungsoo was afraid and needed a face to blame, and Suho fit the ticket. 

"Wait," Suho says, right before Kyungsoo reaches the door. "You know, you still broke the rules. There's supposed to be a punishment for you."

Kyungsoo laughs, dark and bitter. "What punishment? Exile me, force me to become a stowaway on another ship, one with just as many food problems? No, I think being forced to stay here and run out of supplies while you look on with your goddamn tea is punishment enough."  
He turns, and he doesn't look back.

Suho doesn't stop him, this time.

 

.

 

The worst part is going back out to the ship and pretending he doesn't know what he knows. He sees children playing, parents chatting animatedly with Chen, saying things like _thank god they're opening the emergency supplies soon!_ and it takes all of Kyungsoo's willpower not to scream. He finds out that most of the ship thinks that he and Baekhyun and Sehun were just running around causing a disturbance at night like a bunch of idiots, and that's why the three got arrested. Kyungsoo's parents scold him for being irresponsible, but he's well past the age where he could be grounded. Baekhyun asks about what they found in the supplies, since he didn't get to see it. Kyungsoo says he doesn't want to talk about it. Baekhyun can infer what that means. 

Sehun and he don't say anything. Apparently, Sehun was brought in for questioning with another council member that went similar to how his meeting with Suho went. Both Sehun and Kyungsoo still show up to work. Sehun sends some shitty drawings back to Kris, which has Kris very excited and them laughing. They pretend like they aren't going to run out of food.

The hardest person to fake around is Jongin. He takes one look at Kyungsoo and knows something is wrong, so he bothers him endlessly, looking at Kyungsoo with those concerned puppy eyes. Kyungsoo just grabs his hand and kisses his forehead and says he'll talk about it, but not right now.

Kyungsoo decides to spill the beans on a Thursday. He and Jongin are laying in a heap under the singular blanket that's in the basement, arms wrapped around each other and eyes closed in the comfortable silence. Kyungsoo should feel calm—he thinks Jongin is almost asleep, as a matter of fact—but he can't stop thinking about empty shelves, about _we hope, and we wait._

"Jongin," Kyungsoo mutters. Jongin makes a disgruntled sleeping noise. "I need to tell you something."

"Shoot."

So Kyungsoo starts from the beginning. He talks of everything from how long the greenhouse workers have been trying to somehow grow new food, to council member Suho and the decision to use the emergency supplies without telling anyone, to Sehun and the tampered camera and 80085 and empty shelves. He talks about the inevitable future—that Chen, that the boat, that everyone will soon realize there is no more food coming and there's very little they can do about it. Jongin listens attentively, but he looks pained; pained and afraid.

"Kyungsoo," he says lowly. "There's something I need to tell you, too."

Jongin is not from another Korean ship, he says. He is not an exile who committed some crime and became a simple stowaway because of it. He does not have an important lineage that let his family get on one of the grand ships designed to save humanity. His family has always been poor. They were farmers.

Jongin is from a submarine, he says.

"What the _fuck_ are you talking about."

"Did it never seem too simple to you? The idea that the rich and powerful people just happened to sail away in their cushy boats while all the rest of humanity sat around and accepted that they were going to drown? Come on, Kyungsoo. You know that all the little people would never just give up like that."

"But they.....they had no supplies. Everything went to the big boats," Kyungsoo frowns. "All the books, all the accounts—they all say that the rest of the people drowned."

"Yeah, well, they were wrong. There were all kinds of things—my family and our neighbors, we all shoved into a submarine. But I saw other things, barges, elaborate rafts with fisherman on them, even some people who had moved onto the little rocky land that was left. The tops of what used to be mountains—those are still uncovered, you know. The water levels might even be lowering."

Kyungsoo shakes his head in confusion. "That's....That's such _bullshit_ , though, Jongin. I've sat in the surveillance room my whole damn life and watched the cameras film the open ocean. I've never seen anything else. No boats, no land. You're not making sense."

"That's because all of us tried our hardest to stay out of your way," Jongin laughs. "You think the poor folk shoved into their scrap metal submarines didn't notice the colossal warships floating around? We _despised_ you. We all had to struggle to get by, surfacing sometimes when we were sure the big ships weren't around, trying to catch fish or trade with other little family-owned boats we stumbled across. The idea of giving all the rich folk the satisfaction of watching us struggle on their stupid cameras—it was sick. Better for us to lean on each other and let you think us all dead."

"As for never discovering the land, I don't know," Jongin shrugs. "Don't you run on a set course? Maybe you've just never deviated enough from your path to discover anything."

Kyungsoo looks at Jongin in hurt and confusion. "But, Jongin......"

"I don't want to sound bitter," Jongin says with a frown. "But I was. I was for a really long time, and I became fixated on infiltrating one of the big warships. My sisters tried to stop me, telling me it wasn't worth it, but I was so certain that you guys were hiding some kind of riches up here, that all I had to do was sneak on and take it and I could bring it all back to all the other people scattered in the sea who deserved it. But then I got here and it—wasn't what I expected."

"You broke on to the ship?"

"I waited till we were close then surfaced our submarine. I swam the rest of the way during the night so no one would notice. There's a port with an opening by the edge of the basement, so I went in. And then Sehun saw me on the cameras, of course. He figured I was just a stowaway, and we made our agreement. I was surprised by him; all goofy and lame down to earth. I was expecting differently from my idea of these ships. I was pretty naive, thinking back.”

Kyungsoo feels like his head is spinning. There's too much detail, too much assuredness in Jongin's words for it to just be a story. But it can't possibly be true. Land? Little boats? Submarines?

"I spent a few days scoping it out," Jongin says quietly. "It turned out, I was wrong. You guys were all grey walls and sadness and running out of resources. I thought I would find riches here, but I didn't find anything other than normal people stuck on a ship, struggling to get by. Just like everywhere else."

"If that's true, why didn't you leave?"

Jongin smiles wryly. "Because I met you," he says. "Because you stumbled in here with your little taser and I couldn't stop thinking about it, and you were beautiful, and I had no idea how I would find my family's submarine again, and it seemed of little consequence if you decided to come back and visit me. And you did," he smiles wistfully.  
"Kyungsoo, I should've told you all this way before. I should've told you that I've seen the drowned world from the window of our submarine, with the buildings and underwater forests and everything you've read about. Everything I'm saying is real. Even if it doesn't make any sense, it's real and this is the same Jongin you've known speaking, and you have to trust me. After everything, Kyungsoo, _please_ trust me on this."

Kyungsoo shakes his head, slowly at first, then again and again. His heart feels like it dropped to the floor. His head hurts. Why was everything so uncertain these days? Why was Jongin telling him all this now?

"Why are you telling me all this now?"

Jongin bites his lip. "Because....because we need to go back out there."

" _What?_ "

"Think about it, Kyungsoo!" Jongin bursts. "You said it yourself! What's left for you here but for starvation? There are supplies out there—underwater buildings with still salvageable things trapped inside, boats, rafts, land, submarines. There's so much more hope than what you have in here. You have to rally the people to abandon ship." He pauses. "I used to think that coming on board was a mistake," he says, "but maybe it wasn't. Maybe I came here to meet you, to help you guys, to help all the ships. Beijing is running out of resources too, right? So are other ships. We can all head out. We can help each other."

"You're asking me to believe your crazy story—and yes, it is crazy, Jongin, and you have no proof—and sacrifice everything to go out in open water? To leave this all behind? Can you even _hear yourself_ right now?"

"Kyungsoo," Jongin says, placing his hand on top of Kyungsoo's, and it is warm, and familiar, and Kyungsoo wants nothing more to feel the adoration and happiness that touch usually brings him—but right now, all he feels is uncertainty, and fear. "I—."

Kyungsoo yanks his hand free and looks at Jongin with distrust. 

“Leave me alone,” he says. He doesn't look back.

 

.

 

He doesn't speak to Jongin for days. He goes to work in the surveillance room. He listens to Sehun rap and sarcastically claps and doesn't talk about the future. He sits with Baekhyun in the greenhouse, where he doesn't attempt to grow things anymore. They lay there and get dirt on their sleeves and play Rock Paper Scissors and Would You Rather. They don't talk about the future.

He goes and helps Chen—he suggests that Chen make the already small ration packets smaller, to preserve what is left for longer. Chen laughs and says, "Why? As soon as the damn council finally gets off their asses and we have the emergency supplies, we can eat as much as we want!" Kyungsoo excuses himself. He says he doesn't feel well. He goes back to his dorm and chats with his parents and doesn't talk about the future.

He thinks about submarines and little boats and mountaintops and fishing and a risky future that might be a little bit better than this one. He thinks about liars and truthers, about Minseok, about the people who are too far gone to save, about the people who aren't. 

He gets tired of thinking. He sleeps.

He still doesn't speak to Jongin.

And then, as things are often apt to do, things go to shit.

Kyungsoo wakes to screaming. There's a commotion coming from outside, and Kyungsoo can't find his parents anywhere in the dorm, which is odd, because he usually gets up before them. He stumbles outside, still in his pajamas, and blinks.

People are throwing things. There's pushing and shoving, so much screaming and commotion that Kyungsoo can't make out individual words. He sees members of the council standing above everyone else, trying to calm them down. He sees Suho, who looks distressed. He sees Chen, whose face is bright red in rage, who is shaking his fist.

He starts to make out individual words. "Lies", "empty", "nothing left", "the end".

Somehow, the ship has found out the truth about their supply reserves. Kyungsoo feels a burden being lifted off of him—not that he wanted blind panic and fear to overtake the ship, but now, the secret is one he no longer has to keep.

"Please calm down," a council member says into a loudspeaker. "There is no need to panic. We have a plan—"

"No you damn don't!" screams someone in the crowd. There's more pushing, more shoving. Someone gets knocked over. A child cries.

"What the hell are we going to do?" wails a woman. She has a baby on her hip. On the left side of the mob, a council member is yanked into the mass of bodies. He disappears with more yelling and shouting. 

Kyungsoo can't take it anymore. He starts to slink forward, weaving in and out of people, dodging loose elbows. He ducks and runs and sprints, twisting around, holding his breath, slugging through the surge of people. And he gets to the front.

"Suho," he screams, and is still barely able to be heard. "Give me your loudspeaker!"

"What?"

" _Give me your loudspeaker!_ "

Suho hastily unclips his speaker from his belt and tosses it to Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo grabs it and yanks himself up onto a table, where, even with his short stature, he is able to be seen by all.

He hold the speaker to his mouth and takes a deep breath. "SHUT UP!"

For a blissful moment, there is silence. Grumbling confusion, misdirected irritation, half-held insults, but silence. And Kyungsoo starts to speak.

"A while back," he says, "I met a stowaway on board. I thought he was from another ship. But he wasn't." There are already murmurs. _A stowaway? With us?_ He takes a moment to look around deliberately at the audience. "He was from.... from a submarine. A whole group of them—a colony of little ships and little people out there making their way in the ocean."

There's disbelieving whispers, hissing anger, quiet mutters of _more lies_ until they're shushed by someone in the audience who wants to listen. 

"I've seen the emergency supply room," Kyungsoo continues, "And it was empty. We all know that there's nothing left for us here."

"The fuck is your point?!" a slurring, middle aged man screams from the audience. There's a small clamor of agreement with him. 

"I'm going to leave the ship," Kyungsoo says, and instantly chaos erupts. There's pushing and shoving and screaming even worse than before. He stamps his foot down once, twice, three times so people will listen to him, which has limited success at first. He sees, for a brief moment, the hurt in his parents eyes as they look up at him from the crowd. It's a sharp pain in his gut, but he can't afford to think about it.

"I'm going to leave the ship," Kyungsoo repeats, loudly, "because I met someone that I trust with my life who tells me there's a better future if I do. I'm going to leave the ship, as if you want to come with me, then I welcome your help. If you want to stay here and starve, feel fucking free."

He drops the loudspeaker into the audience. Literal mic drop. Baekhyun would later tell him it's the coolest thing he's ever done.

He steps back into the crowd where people surround him and push into him, making him feel claustrophobic and dizzy, but the clamor is so much that he's able to sidle over to the edges to escape the mess of the distressed people (and the even more distressed council members) relatively unnoticed.

He goes to his storage closet library, because he can't think of where else to go. He slides down the wall and puts his head between his knees, breathing deep and slow.

God, he's fucking insane for doing this.

He's there for a few minutes—he can't tell quite how long—when he hears a knock at the door. Kyungsoo looks up bleary eyed and wonders who would bother coming to this tiny little storage closet. He can only think of one.

The door swings open, and he's right. It's Jongin.

"Did you mean it?" Jongin says, in lieu of a normal greeting.

Kyungsoo lets out a long breath. "Yeah," he mutters eventually, "and I believe you now, in case you couldn't tell."

"I was in there, along the edges," Jongin admits, "I heard all the commotion from downstairs and figured no one would notice me—and then when you got up there, I—" he bites his lip.

"I'm sorry," Kyungsoo says, "for both ignoring you and not believing you. It was a lot, at first."

"It's alright," Jongin says, walking over to where Kyungsoo is sitting and plopping down with him. There's very little room in there, so his whole side is pressed up against Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo leans into Jongin's warmth. With all the mess, Kyungsoo missed the simplicity and comfort of Jongin's company more than he's willing to admit.

"What the fuck are we doing, Jongin," Kyungsoo mutters. 

"All that we know that we can," Jongin answers, with a light laugh, giving Kyungsoo's shoulders a squeeze. Kyungsoo just turns and buries himself more in Jongin's neck. 

He finds his lips just lightly brushing against Jongin's jugular—not really a kiss, just more of a teasing light breath, a presence, on Jongin's neck. He feels Jongin shift around uncomfortably, say "Kyungsoo," with a ever-so-slight pleading tone in his voice, and yeah, Kyungsoo decides he likes that.

He puts more pressure—just enough, that he can feel Jongin's shortness of breath, but not enough to leave any marks. He feels Jongin's arm snake around his waist, probably involuntarily, feels his hands grasp at Kyungsoo's hips (Jongin is always so _grabby_ , but it's not like Kyungsoo is complaining—) 

"Kyungsoo," Jongin wheezes, "Now, is definitely not the time."

Kyungsoo pulls back from Jongin's neck and smiles impishly. "Why not?" he asks. Jongin groans.

"You're going to be the death of me," Jongin says, and Kyungsoo laughs. This is so much easier, so much simpler, than dealing with all the problems outside these walls. Right now it's just them, and that's all Kyungsoo wants. 

Jongin pulls him in for their lips to lock, and Kyungsoo melts against his mouth. He feels melding tongues, wandering hands, and he allows his mind to go totally blank. Jongin's palm runs across the small of his back. Kyungsoo's fingers pull and ruffle through the back of Jongin's hair, mussing it up.

Jongin pushes him back onto the floor, positioning himself straddling over Kyungsoo, pressing down. Kyungsoo lets out a small moan, a half choked "Jongin-" and then—

Kyungsoo's stomach rumbles.

They break apart. Kyungsoo stares up at Jongin, chest heaving, sees his eyes dark and his lips swollen. And then Kyungsoo's stomach rumbles again.

"The whole 'starvation' thing is really killing the vibe right now," Jongin whispers, and Kyungsoo snorts. He's suddenly all too aware that they're lying in a literal closet, that there's a small rebellion that Kyungsoo may or may not have incited outside, that the future could be going to shit and he is now expected to lead it there.

Jongin breaks into a grin, and Kyungsoo shares it, and they're suddenly both giggling like stupid little kids, cracking up on the cramped floor. Jongin collapses on Kyungsoo, face tucked into one shoulder, basically flattening him.

"Get up, asshole, you're heavy," Kyungsoo quips, to which Jongin whines out a "noooooooo" and Kyungsoo (affectionately) rolls his eyes and smiles, just a little.

Somehow, he feels like they're going to be okay.

 

.

 

When he returns to his dorm that night, his mother is perched on the foot of his bed. She looks up at him with sad eyes. 

"I have a lot of things I should ask you," she says, "but I'll keep it to this—are you really going to leave?"

Kyungsoo swallows the lump he has in his throat. "Yeah," he says, voice hoarse. "Yeah. I'm sorry, Mom."

She shakes her head and looks down. "I suppose I can't stop you," she whispers, voice quiet, and dreadfully sad.

"You and Dad could always come with me."

She laughs. "And leave everything? No, Kyungsoo. I've served this ship since the day I was born. If it goes down, I go down with it."

Kyungsoo just frowns. "But you don't _have_ to—" 

"You're still young," she interrupts, "and you're determined to survive, and for that I applaud you. But the older folk—we have loyalty, we fear change." She looks down, quiet, and then back up, hardened resolve in her eyes. “But Soo, I promise you, will survive here as well,” she says. "I don't know how we'll make it work, but one day we'll meet you out there on the ocean with all our supplies sorted out and we can trade with you in whatever form you are just like we do the other ships."

Kyungsoo smiles. "Sounds nice."

"It will be."

His mother leans in and places a gentle kiss on his cheek. "Honey," she says, voice breaking just a little, "be careful out there."

Kyungsoo wonders how it came to this, how life as he knew it seemingly fell apart in the stretch of six months, and how he was suddenly here, leaving his parents behind. He holds tight to her hand and believes with all of his heart that her words are true.

He promises her he'll be safe. It's the last serious conversation he has with his mom for a long, long time.

 

.

 

The next morning, everyone interested in leaving meets in the ship labs. Beforehand, Kyungsoo had sent a quick message to the Beijing ship informing them of what all went down.

 **SHIPID1228:** o shit boi lol  
**SHIPID1228:** i am real down 4 goigng out on an advntur with u all bcs we don't hav any food lmaoo  
**SHIPID1228:** i will tell my bois to spread th word. we will get canoes

 **SHIPID1102:** OK, great. We'll need all the help we can get out there.  
**SHIPID1102:** Also, could you tell Yixing about this? He mentioned to me once that he thought we should have come up with a better solution by now—I think this might be it.

 **SHIPID1228:** ya ok xing is kewl  
**SHIPID1228:** we will see u. in da ocean

 **SHIPID1228:** See you.

After affirming that they they would have the company of some Beijinger's (and their supplies), Kyungsoo feels a little more at ease. He looks around at the labs—a large amount of people have gathered here, most of them ones that Kyungsoo recognize. The main ones are loudly talking at a table in the center.

"I can get the lifeboats from the emergency supply room," Sehun says. "I have the code, after all, and the moves to sneak them out."

"You don't have moves, Sehun."

" _Hey—_ "

"I can work on manufacturing fishing rods and nets," Taeyeon interrupts. She's such an angel, honestly. "We'll need them, and we have all the supplies in the labs." 

"And I can make little floaties and rafts and life preservers!" Chanyeol yells. "Because science is cool!"

Jongin offers to show everyone where he came onto the ship, and where he knows the other emergency exits are. Chen offers to supply empty ration packet bags for people to pack their belongings, and to speak to people who might be willing to help—he does talk to the whole ship, after all. From the back of the room, a woman volunteers her compass. A quiet hermit of a guy offers all the ration packets that he's been hoarding in his room to share. A father of three who Kyungsoo has never talked to before offers his hobby as an artist to keep a sea chart.

Everyone is clamoring, saying what they can offer, bringing themselves to the table. Kyungsoo feels kind of emotional.

"Should we have a flag? Should we have a code name?" Baekhyun asks.

"Isn't _surviving_ more important?"

"Uh, surviving is way less cool when you don't have a cool group name while doing it."

"Viva la resistance!" Chanyeol says.

"The Yehets," Sehun says.

"Sehun, what the _fuck_ is a yehet—" 

The conversation derails into eye-rolling, yelling, disagreeing and increasingly stupider names being thrown out into the open. Kyungsoo sighs. They have a long way to go, and not enough time to go it.

"Interesting group you have here," Chen says, who has slid up to Kyungsoo without him noticing. Kyungsoo gives a light chuckle.

"You could say that again."

"If you make this work, it'd be a miracle,” he says. Chen's words do not exactly inspire confidence. Kyungsoo tells him this, and Chen leans his head back and laughs, a stereotypical Chen-style boisterous laugh.

"Nah," he says, "I have complete faith in you, kid."

 

.

 

It takes a few hours to work out everyone's jobs and contributions, a few days to actually acquire it all, but they finally make it—dragging lifeboats and lab-built rafts down to the basement where the large port exit is. Kyungsoo passed Suho the other day, who told him that the Council wasn't going to stop them. "I don't agree," Suho had said, "but you restored order better than we could have, and we don't have the resources or the energy to make you all stay."

So there was that, at least.

Kyungsoo is triple-checking everything he's shoved on his boat—his belongings, his fishing rod, his life preserver, courtesy of Chanyeol. He had even grabbed the book _Walden_ for good measure.

He looks behind him. In one boat, there's Chanyeol and Baekhyun and Taeyon and Sehun. He sees others—people who offered to help and people who didn't, people who look excited and people who look scared, children and toddlers and the elderly alike. He sees the uber religious Kim family, and smiles when he sees baby Minseok bundled up in their arms—color was actually beginning to return to his face. Yixing truly was a miracle worker. He sees Chen and the couple who sprints down the hallway and the woman who read Jongin's palm.

"What are you thinking about?" Jongin asks, behind him.

"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing," Kyungsoo says honestly, but Jongin just smiles.

"No great leader ever does," he says, and Kyungsoo laughs and elbows him, says, "Still stuck on those philosophy books, I see."

"Kyungsoo!" Baek yells loudly from his boat. "Can we open the door? Get these babies in the water?"

Kyungsoo resists the urge to crawl away and swallows the lump in his throat. "Yeah," he says, "Let's go."

The door creaks open with agonizing slowness, revealing the stretch forward before it drops off into the water, stretched endlessly ahead, a dark, fearful menace. 

Kyungsoo helps the other boats first, pushing the rafts over to the edge and helping load up supplies to all the people in the water before he follows suit. At last, only his and Jongin's boat is left (they got a private one because Kyungsoo is a V.I.P., apparently).

"Into the sea, captain?" Jongin teases. Kyungsoo smiles.

"To sea."

He doesn't know if they're making the right choice—but his boat slips into the water, and he looks up at the rising summer sun with the crowds of people smiling, shooshing each other on their boats, looking at the water with fear and awe. And he looks to the left of him and sees Jongin there, just as beautiful as he was at the start; and he looks behind him and sees the boat, the one place he'd spent his whole life, one that he was now leaving behind to find someplace new. Someplace better.

Jongin slips his hand into his and it is a warm and appreciated feeling. Kyungsoo squeezes his fingers and let's the unfamiliar and daunting feeling of hope fill him up all the way from his toes. With Jongin, he can do anything. And they're going to be okay.

"Forward!" Kyungsoo yells, and they begin rowing. 

 

 

Once upon a time, the whole world drowned.

But they didn't.


End file.
